I’m renting this shit for the 360, because the single player will probably be fun, but in all seriousness I’ve never been hugely in love with CoD multiplayer and the single player games are always so damn short that it just doesn’t seem worth the price.

While this Steam group is a BOYCOTT group and therefore this a fail, don’t take the same attitude towards the petition. I signed the petition, and I will be buying the game, because I read the petition carefully. It said nothing about a “boycott”, just that Infinity Ward should “reconsider” the decision to cut out mods and dedicated servers.

I will be buying the game because I am one of those “crazy” people who want it for the singleplayer, not the multiplayer. I played COD4 for the first time back in January, and it remains the most intense and memorable gaming experiences I’ve had all year. And I’ve played a bunch of great games this year. I don’t care that its only 6 hours long — I would gladly pay $60 for Portal as well — game length is not as important as game quality.

And for all of you saying “well I don’t care about this game” or “I’ve never heard of this game” or “I’m too busy playing Game X” in every Modern Warfare 2 thread — you’re beginning to sound kinda childish. You’re not special, and you’re not adding much to the discussion. There *are* people who care about these games — let them talk about the game in peace. There are plenty of games posted up on here that I don’t care anything about, but I don’t waste your time and mine telling you that, unless I also have something substantive to say.

“and it remains the most intense and memorable gaming experiences I’ve had all year.”
Out of curiousity, and I’m being serious here, which never-ending-respawn-of-enemies part of the game was ‘intense and memorable’? I remember the street one, the building one, and the sniper one, but none of them was particularly intense, but I guess it’s memorable in that I can see myself sprinting to the x on the floor that prevented further enemy spawning in each of those locales.

I’ve never had the antipathy to the re-spawning enemies thing that everyone else seems to have. Its a gameplay conceit, and one I’m quite used to, having played the previous COD games quite a lot.

I feel like its almost the reaction I have when playing a point-and-click adventure game: I’ve played so many of them that grabbing everything that isn’t nailed down and combining every item with every other item feels instinctive and natural, not gamey and illogical. Just like it feels natural combing every dead body for vendor trash in an RPG or moving towards the obvious story trigger points in a Half-Life game, etc.

In COD games, I find myself falling into a rhythm: crouch behind cover, shoot a bunch of guys, sprint to the next cover, shoot more guys, etc. The “cross line X to move on” thing didn’t seem forced or problematic unless you decide to buck the gameplay the game is trying to pull you towards — that is, if you just park yourself in one spot and refuse to move*. Which to me is like refusing to combine items in a point-and-click adventure game — you might as well not play one.

Also, what the respawning enemies design does is force me out of my standard mode of play, out of my comfort zone: I tend to be a sniper. I recently played Crysis, which has a suit with all these modes for in-your-face action — strength to grab exploding barrels and launch them at enemies, super speed to get right up to people and punch the building down around them. Yet I found myself spending vast amounts of time slowly sneaking forward, binoculars, sneak forward, see tiny dot in distance of enemy, snipe enemy, cloak & run away, do it again. Amusing for awhile, but eventually I grew bored and had to basically force myself to take the more aggressive approach. COD does not allow you to play that way, you have to keep moving forward, aggressively, into danger.

I’d talk about what parts actually did make the game memorable to me, but I’ve already written an essay about the respawning enemies thing and I’m tired now. If you’re actually interested maybe I’ll write more later.

* or if you’re playing on a too-high difficulty level, which is a mistake I think a lot of people make. Veteran is not any fun unless you’ve already totally memorized the game. I will also admit that there are a couple of places where the easy rhythm I described above breaks down because the signposting of where-to-go is not obvious; the most blatant of which is the TV station, which I know is what killed the game for a bunch of people. They needed a bit of that Valve-style constant playtesting there, I think.

MW2 makes me cry at night. I love (still) CoD4 MP. Especially the bigger 32 and even 50 man servers. It was one of the few FPSs I have played online that, imo, is balanced. And was great fun in TDM, sabotage, domination S&D and all the others. I and 5 others would often play CoD4 in the evening chatting over skype. Always picking the one or 2 servers that we always played on as they had the options we liked. When I first heard it was going to be on steam I thought great. Love the steam server browser and fiends lists. And VAC isnt too bad. Still helps to have server admins but still, picks up alot of people. Then the rest of it started to appear…

MW2 seems to be the same MP as CoD4(Great) but limited to P2P, shoddy host mitigation and only 9v9 AT MOST! (Not so great…).

All I can hope is they fix it before people figure out out to make MW2 run reliably on dedi servers with cracks and other stuffs.

Mocking guys like these scrubs is pretty much the same as throwing rocks at the retarded kid. The few of them that can actually comprehend words above 3 syllables (or even what a syllable is) are already so depressed by their lack of purpose in life its just pointless.

In all seriousness, this is more sad than funny. With an eye to long-range trends in the PC game market, it’s much more important to take a stand against IW for MW2 than against Valve for L4D2. (Which is to say, it’s important period, since there was no far-reaching relevance to the L4D2 boycott.) I sincerely wish that IW would end up feeling real pain over its arrogant dismissal of best practices for PC games, but this is yet another reminder that the game will be a super-mega-ultra success no matter how much noise is made by gamers and journalists.

You’re going to have to help me here, because so far every rationalisation I’ve heard from people who support protests about the dedicated servers for MW2 and were utter twats about the L4D2 ones completely smell of ad hoc justification.

Looking at various different reasons for why they are supposedly issues miles apart, one deserving of support and the other deserving of all the ridicule and bias that was heaped on it, I am not the slightest bit informed about what standards people set, if any. I could not ever predict what possible future issues they would take a stand on and what they would dismiss.

Some of us stood like a rock over Left4Dead 2, are still doing and are going to keep doing so and will get nothing but shit and ignorance from people for it. But the protests over Modern Warfare 2 have had a very easy ride and I don’t understand why. Nothing has been explained.

I think both boycotts are kinda pointless because these companies will still make millions and these boycotts will feel like a slight breeze on the backs of their necks. For every 1 person boycotting it, 5 new gamers just became fans. Unless you’re just doing it on principle, in which case, good on ya. IW doesn’t owe 1% of gamers anything, least of all me, and maybe that’s cynical, but I would like to think that’s just business. I don’t want to play a game without dedicated servers, so I don’t.

My principle is this: without dedicated server support, the multiplayer is useless to me (unless proven otherwise), so I don’t buy it. Not so much a boycott as it is a setting up of priorities for my gaming habits and following through. We can complain, we can be upset, but why? There are a ton of games that are available for any platform, if it doesn’t affect 99% of gamers, then what are we fighting? Should I begin by trying to prove to others that dedicated servers are better, and then start a petition? I do understand the complaint, getting rid of dedicated servers is completely stupid in my opinion, but only for PC, which is why the game will not be purchased by me. But think about it, most gamers play on a console these days, and of those that don’t, only a small percentage are “boycotting” the game (as in, I’m mad, but am still buying it anyway). So, have they even lost any sales? Now add the percentage they just gained from the hype machine and this is the most successful game of all time.

What reason do they have to change? If I made a game, would I cater to the smallest percentage to make them happy?

“A boycott is a form of consumer activism involving the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons.”

Very funny. I also like the subtle irony of people using Steam’s community creation feature to complain about the Steamwork’s game most of them are currently playing not being able to foster a community.

there’s 800 people in that group how many are playing the game?, how many of those payed for it? they do take boycotts seriously just not that seriously, if they had 1 million signatures they’d’ve caved, 100,000 an’t enough.

The thing I find the most amusing will be all the people that are so “this is the bestest PC game evar” will be all the ones crying a few months from now when a map-pack comes out and you have to drop more cash to download it or you’ll be the only one playing the old boring maps. Do you like being nickel and dimed?

I signed the petition – I didn’t buy it – and if I do someday want to play the 4 hr SP game, I’ll torrent it…and I’ll seed it. And nothing matters beyond that to me – my money will go to a company that supports PC gaming.

I guess what I’m saying is that actual sentient human beings are no longer top of the food chain.
We’ve managed to create a sub species that will eventually overwhelm out eat and out pace us for the win.

We’ll have to live in the sky in airships and our downfall will be that we were smart but not smart enough to create enough foods that fly.

It’s fine, I’m an engineer and come the xbox-tard (zombie?) apocalypse I’ll jury rig some kind of automated plankton and/or algae extractor.
I’m sure that the biochemists in our flying cities (or more probable floating in the middle of the Atlantic) can manage some kind of processing in order to make it digestible for us. Or at least plan it and then look at us engi’s utterly confused and helpless when it comes to actually building it practically.

While I’m sure that there are tons of whiners who said they were going to boycott the game who ended up buying it, I don’t know if pointing to a boycott group where 0.04% of the total group is currently playing the game is big evidence that the boycott is a failure.

More interesting to me is that, at least in terms of revenue, Torchlight outsold all the MW2 preorders on Steam. That makes me really happy, because Torchlight is amazing.

You know, I’m trying to take your argument seriously, but if you just look closely at the picture, you’ll realise that it hasn’t been handpicked in any way. If you go onto the group page, that’s what you see.

I will not buy MW2 no matter what! Of course, there is the small fact that my computer can't play it, I can't afford it even if I did want to buy it, I have to many games already to play and seriously can't add another to them or I will physically create a black hole in my computer room that will tear apart the earth, ect. So I don't really count for a boycotter I'm just poor in every way (time/money/will power)

I played the L4D2 demo and feel a bit more for Vinraith's camp then before, it isn't really a diffrent game at all :( Sure it has diffrent locations and diffrent monsters ect but these are the sort of things you find in expansions all the time. I'm not saying I'm totally for L4D2 boycotters but I can see their point of view as I can the MW2 boycotters point of view. Both parties have some silly people in them though making the rest look bad. such is the case with any large group of angry people though some people join a group of angry people just so they can be angry.

Oh, I know it wasn’t handpicked at all, and I’m not trying to insinuate that (and I hope it didn’t come off that way). Seeing the screenshot made me curious, because it sounded like a huge majority of the group was playing the game, so I actually went to look at the group itself to see how many people were playing the game.

My point is that while the screenshot is funny and highlights a few people who are obvious hypocrites, pointing to it as “evidence that boycotts fail” seems a bit ridiculous given the extremely low percentage of people it represents. When I checked, out of the entire group, 0.04% of the total members were playing the game. I’m sure a whole bunch more in the group will go on to play it, and I wouldn’t be surprised the majority of people boycotting the game end up buying it anyway, but seeing this screenshot plastered all over the internet like some killer piece of evidence is weird to me.

That said, I have no idea if this “boycott” will be successful or not, and I don’t really have any vested interest in if it does or doesn’t as it doesn’t affect me in any way.

It’s not meant as boycott failure evidence; that evidence will simply be simply whether anything changes or not. This is just as you said, a humorous way to highlight a few hypocritical people so we can laugh for a few moments and feel good about ourselves.

I see what you mean, but really I think this kind of screenshot is just a way of pointing out that causes like boycotts often get a lot of people who sign up and make noise, but won’t actually go through with it. I don’t think anyone is saying boycotts will never work and everyone who signs up to a boycott is an idiot (there are clear issues with both L4D2 and COD:MW2, though I wasn’t personally bothered by any of it myself, I can see why people would be).

There is also humour there as you pointed out, which I feel is the main point of this post. I think (hope) most people are aware of the things you’ve mentioned and everyone else has brought up regarding taking stuff like this as evidence and the weaknesses of internet style boycotts and signature campaigns.

Gabe Newell already has, without actually releasing the data. He went down another notch in my book. I was only ever intending to get angry about L4D2 and leave it at that and continue supporting and buying Valve’s games. It’s getting harder to take that view now.

Actually, I wrote a script a few days ago whose only goal was to parse all the profiles of the people in the Boycott Left 4 Dead 2 group. I excluded private profiles and made a ratio. There was only 3.5% of all this people who bought the game. Looks like they’re taking it a bit more seriously, for the moment…

I wasn’t 100% sure on getting MW2 as is, and the lack of dedicateds was basically a giant middle finger. But seeing how the campaign is cheesy as fuck from what I read (hell, I thought /v/ were trolling the first time I read the synopsis) I really have no interest for it anymore.

It’s kind of sad how this will basically tell everyone else that they can get away with shit and still have people play.

I was kind of annoyed about L4D2, on the other hand, but so far they haven’t done anything dickish apart from maybe release a sequel too early. I’ll probably still be waiting on the reviews and Christmas for it, though.

Yeah, I never touched the CoD4 multiplayer, so I honestly don’t give a damn about dedicated servers, but the price gouging? And the fact that they appear to have turned a single player story with a realistic, gritty depiction of war into a cheesy action movie?

But surely with the console sales, all a boycott would achieve anyway would be the publishers deciding the PC market wasn’t worth it. Also: People going “I’m so pissed off, I’m going to pirate it, that’ll show them”

To be honest I don’t really know how this game has got the hype it has.

The first CoD was one of the best games of its day, the second kept the formula but built it up into a cinematic masterpiece. The Fourth pretty much did the same but in a different setting. MW2 is the same as the fourth except the plot is worse and the price is higher, apart from a few new weapons NOTHING IS DIFFERENT, hell they’ve reused 90% of the animations from CoD:4.

The basic gameplay of this series was tired by the time the fourth came along, now its just a dead horse.

This has made me far more sad than angry, “The Man” always wins. But I ain’t buying this shit.